VA chief’s exit no Rx for five-hour ride

VA Secretary Jim Nicholson is quitting his post and going back to the “private sector.”

What does this mean for you, the Rio Grande Valley veteran who must take a five-hour van ride to San Antonio for treatment at the Audie Murphy VA Hospital?

Or an old warhorse, cane in hand, climbing off that van after a 90-minute drive from Kerrville?

Not much, probably. The hospital you dream about is still in the distant future, certainly not in your lifetime if you are a veteran of World War II or Korea.

A study due for release in a couple of weeks is expected to tell us if it is needed. But even if it concludes the hospital is long overdue, this administration or the next one will have to round up the votes in Congress for it.

Perhaps so. But in interviews, he always seemed dour, aloof and uncomfortable. Nicholson was the opposite of his predecessor, the engaging Anthony Principi.

Last year, I asked Nicholson if he would put up with an hours-long drive to see a doctor.

He didn’t answer me.

“All I can say is we’re trying to make this health care as good and as accessible as we can,” Nicholson said.

Hutchison, R-Texas, sought the study and last year told me it was “a good first step,” but that’s as far as it went. Nicholson didn’t promise it would lead to anything.

He’ll get to see the report before leaving the VA this fall.

“Obviously the study is going to be important because we want to know exactly who is there, exactly how many are there, what their needs are and what the demographic projections are in the future,” Nicholson said.

Valley veterans are skeptics, made that way by the government they served.

In a statement issued after Nicholson’s exit was unveiled, Hutchison said the Department of Veterans Affairs during his tenure “has vastly improved medical care for our veterans at time when our VA facilities are under significant strain due to the demands of the Global War on Terror.” Funding, she added, has doubled from fiscal year 2001.

No doubt about it, the VA has a big job. It treated 5 million people nationwide in 2004, including 327,489 in Texas, and is bound to have a growing population as hundreds of thousands of Iraq and Afghan veterans flow into the system. It’s building medical centers in Las Vegas and Orlando, Fla., and has added dozens of community outpatient clinics.

Perhaps the biggest hindrance to good VA health care for our veterans has been Congress and successive administrations. They’ve long loved to wave the flag and talk up their respect for vets, but managed to forget them when it came time to divvy up taxpayer dollars.

No one argues the point: VA historically has been on the short end of the funding stick.

The question now is how long it will take for veterans in the Valley, most of them Hispanic and heroes all in our many wars, to drive across town to see a doctor rather than take a 10-hour round trip for treatment. Our paper has called on Congress and the VA to finally build that hospital. Every lawmaker and VA administrator should be required to read the two editorials we did and state Rep. Aaron Pena’s thoughts on the issue.

“These are soldiers who love their country,” Pena, D-Edinburg, told the paper. “They love it so much that it is in every fiber, in every sinew, in every vessel, in every corpuscle. They bleed love for their country, and to think the government has forgotten about them just tears at them. They have given so much.”